


Spirits of the Age

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 16:52:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2514884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt "something silly with ghosts". In which the supernatural seems as good an explanation as any for Marius's circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spirits of the Age

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clenster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clenster/gifts).



“When I asked if you knew German,” said Courfeyrac in a tone pitched - not for the first time in his and Marius's acquaintance - between weary resignation and amusement, “I hadn’t imagined events might play themselves out in quite this manner.”

A few weeks earlier, the inquiry had been both innocent and even helpful. An acquaintance of Courfeyrac having mentioned an acquaintance of _his_ who was in need of a translator, Marius had made his way to the address given, in anticipation of staving off impoverishment for a further week or so. What he had not anticipated was the arrestingly eldritch aspect of his destination, situated at the furthest and darkest point of an alleyway in the shadow of the Tuileries, behind a door that opened with an anguished-sounding creak of hinges.

The place appeared to all intents and purposes to be a bookshop, despite an absolute lack of customers and scattered piles of stock that looked to have remained untouched since the days of the Directoire. The shop’s thin and sallow proprietor, his face in shadow as he ushered Marius down a shallow set of stairs into a cellar more dank and airless than the shop itself, gave nothing away, only rummaging in piles of literary debris before turning back to Marius, pressing a thick and dusty volume into his hands and hissing that he needed a translation done in no more than a week.

Marius, his eyes round, retreated up the stairs, the book held tight under his elbow, and his grip on it did not loosen until he found himself back in Courfeyrac’s rooms. The book, he saw on closer inspection, was leather-bound and clearly ancient, closed with a metal lock which bore mysterious scratches.

He set it down upon his mattress and looked up, startled, as a sudden scatter of rain against the window set it rattling. There was an ominous roll of thunder as the already unpromising evening gave way decisively to a dark and stormy night.

 

Marius felt more than unsettled whenever he laid eyes on the volume. The week he should have spent on it, he instead engaged in thinking of the girl from the Luxembourg Gardens, darning his coat-pocket, and avoiding human company as much as he could.

Eventually opening the book with some trepidation after a week had gone by, he found it contained no more than a collection of folk-tales in their original German, awaiting his translation. Reading the accompanying note, he learned the tales had been rendered into French already, almost two decades ago, but not to his employer's satisfaction, and it now fell to Marius to make a more exact translation.

The task seemed simple enough, yet as the days went by Marius found himself incapable of doing more than reading, the stories of mystery and horror within making far more of an impression on him than he might have wished. He spent whole days immersed in them, becoming lost entirely in their tales of spectres, succubi, death-brides and haunted hallways, chambers and portraits. Ignoring his employer’s increasingly insistent messages, he barely left the apartment to eat or drink or let himself indulge in seeing the sunlight.

Still unable to work, he thought of giving the whole project up, and might have done so had his determination not been strengthened, on a rare visit to Corinthe, by a conversation with Prouvaire. He waxed rhapsodic on the text’s significance, talking of the influence its previous translation had had on Mary Shelley, Polidori and other figures of whose achievements Marius was conscious, but had tended to pass over in favour of re-reading Lockhart’s _History of Napoleon_. However well-intentioned, this discussion did not prove the most helpful of contributions.

 

On a subsequent evening, with the hour approaching midnight, Marius lifted his gaze from the grimoire’s pages to scrutinise his surroundings with sudden suspicion. The shadows of Courfeyrac’s rooms had grown sinister since he had last raised his head, the shapes cast by a discarded cravat or towering stack of pamphlets seeming occult and unnatural. Footsteps on the stairs outside seemed to start and stop at arbitrary intervals, as though not the product of a human visitor. A dark red stain on the dresser, where wine had been spilled a night ago, took on the appearance of blood.

Biting his lip, and wondering vaguely when he had last eaten, Marius returned to the book.

He thought back to his narrow escape from the Gorbeau tenement, a building which – he now saw clearly – could surely be nothing other than a portal to some ghastly hidden dimension through which that set of demons had escaped to visit torment on the innocent.

In fact, he wondered, could not all his misfortunes be traced somehow to the awakening of some ancient curse, some otherworldly maelstrom of mysteries into which he had unwittingly blundered? He pressed his hand against his forehead, thinking of the inexplicable twists his life had recently taken - and, eventually, before his fading vision swam the face of the girl in the Luxembourg.

He started half-out of his chair, appalled. He was conscious of the pulse in his temple. He drew from his pocket the monogrammed handkerchief he had picked up in the park, set it on the desk before him, and cast an eye over its inscrutable folds with growing apprehension. This ghost in human form, surely, this succubus, could only be a spectral apparition sent to tempt him. Her unnaturally perfect appearance – and those iridescent eyes – and her constant companion, with that brooding, implacable look of his! There could be no more plausible explanation for so charming, so flawless, so perfect a vision as she.

His teeth began to chatter in terror and instinctively he crammed the handkerchief into his mouth, then spat it out in increased panic as its occult provenance occurred to him.

Before things could proceed further, the door swung open, its crash against the wall startling Marius beyond expression.

Courfeyrac, looking flushed with triumph, cast himself into the nearest chair and had removed both his gloves before noticing either the terrified look his friend had fixed upon him or certain other alterations to the room.

“Good evening, Marius. Why,” he asked, carefully, “is the mirror covered with your bedsheet?”

Still staring and twisting the handkerchief between his fingers, Marius drew a deep breath. “It is the only way I could prevent myself from meeting the gaze of the apparition that frequently appears there.”

Courfeyrac, feeling grateful for the cushioning effect of that evening’s drinking, nodded as though this were perfectly logical behaviour – which, for Pontmercy, he supposed it was.

“An apparition?” he asked.

“Yes – the last worldly trace left of some starving wretch who once inhabited these walls, no doubt. A white, drawn face, with ghastly hollowed cheeks and eyes that sought to reach into my very soul ...”

Having described exactly his own appearance at that moment, Marius shuddered. Courfeyrac raised a hand to his face to hide his own expression.

Marius turned his gaze towards the window. “And take care when opening the curtains. This face has occasionally appeared there too.”

“At the window? But we are on the ninth floor.”

“That,” countered Marius darkly, “is my point precisely.”

“Get some rest, and take a drink with me tomorrow,” said Courfeyrac with a sigh. “You have remained here with the curtains drawn too long. I am in favour of indulgence in unwholesome seclusion, but clearly there are limits even to that.”

 

In Corinthe, Courfeyrac cheerfully outlined the book’s effect on Marius while Marius himself intently studied the rim of his wine-glass. Only Combeferre had thus far allowed that Marius's belief in the supernatural might be greeted with anything other than affectionate ridicule - but this had been a piece of solidarity so unexpected that Marius could interpret it only as an act of mockery in itself.

From his corner Grantaire, perhaps inspired to outdo the room’s general level of scepticism, amused himself by suggesting enlisting the ranks of the recently dead in any incipient rebellion.

“If the people are to rise from their oppressed conditions, then why not from their tombs alongside? A revenants' revolution – and why not, as it can hardly involve greater effort or will? And surely a man who has died once already is unlikely to mind the inconvenience of being asked to do so a second time - ”

He broke off to give a sidelong glance at the table where Enjolras, intent on annotating a plan of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, gave no sign of having heard.

Marius was hardly cheered by these proceedings, but allowed himself to be sufficiently distracted. He turned his attention to the dish before him – apparently a specialty of the kitchen, albeit one that Bossuet was now describing to Joly as “the piece of cod which passeth all understanding” – and, with an attempt at being cheerful and relaxed, he raised his glass to his lips.

With an unholy crash, the room was plunged into darkness. At the open window, the curtain billowed inwards. There was a sudden scream and rising tumult in the street outside.

Marius leapt from his chair but then remained rooted to the spot as the room rapidly emptied. He was unsure whether to be terrified or exultant in his momentary flash of vindication. Screwing his courage to the sticking-place, he moved to the window and looked out, fearing the sight of whatever spectral horror might rise to greet him.

His discovery that the noise was due merely to the smashing of a streetlight, heralding the arrival of unplanned but welcome _émeute_ in the Rue Mondétour, was a heartfelt relief - although admittedly it proved, as events continued, a short-lived one.

**Author's Note:**

> “The piece of cod which passeth all understanding” is not my own pun.
> 
> The book Marius is given to translate, as you might have guessed, is [this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasmagoriana). Happy Hallowe'en.


End file.
